The extraction shooter Escape from Tarkov still enjoys great popularity years after its release. If only it weren’t for the tiresome hackers who regularly spoil the fun for the players. The developers were accused of not doing enough to combat the “cheater plague”, now they are sending a clear signal.
What is the cheating problem? Since the server wipe in December, Escape from Tarkov players have increasingly complained about brazen hackers and cheaters. They wouldn’t even bother to hide their cheating.
The developers were accused of not doing enough against the plague of cheaters. Nikita Buanov, the game director, commented on the problems via reddit and assured: They are taking care of them, working on solutions and banning thousands of cheaters.
Players accuse Escape from Tarkov of not doing anything about the plague of cheaters – now the boss speaks plain language
Apparently, simply banning users of wallhacks, aimbots and the like was not enough for the developers of Battlestate Games. They wanted to set an example and publicly expose the troublemakers.
Here you can find a trailer of the latest map “Streets of Tarkov”:
Escape from Tarkov – Patch 0.13 trailer
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Signs against cheaters and for honest players
What are the developers doing? As the US site TechCrunch reports, Tarkov banned 6,700 cheaters in the past week alone. On top of that. In addition, each individual’s username was shared publicly in a handy spreadsheet.
What shoud that? Publishing the player names should have a double effect: on the one hand, the cheaters are exposed, on the other hand, the good players should see that Battlestate is doing something about the problem:
We want honest players to see cheaters’ nicknames, to know that justice has been done and the cheater who killed them in the raid has been punished and banned.
Battlestate spokesman Dmitri Ogorodnikov via TechCrunch
The radical approach should not remain a one-off thing, but the names of the cheaters should be published regularly from now on. There are already several spreadsheets on Tarkov’s Twitter account, in addition to cheaters there are also banned real-money sellers (via Twitter).
How is the community reacting? The reactions on Twitter are rather mixed. The attempt to take action against the cheaters was received positively and some players actually report being able to perceive a change.
But the general public seems to have little hope that the problem can actually be gotten under control. They report ongoing encounters with cheaters who would just buy a new account anyway, and some claim that the bans don’t always hit the right people, but also innocent people (via Twitter).
The Tarkov streamer Lvndmark, who is repeatedly accused of cheating, is not on the list. But a player with the name “LvndMalk” does. The original has now developed its very own concept to deal with the problem:
Twitch streamer uses unusual means to refute cheating allegations in Tarkov – with questionable success